D&D General How do you use dragons in your game?

Rarely.

Not a huge fan of dragons, to begin with. They are hugely overused across pop culture, and so I find them kind of boring, given all the amazing and much more original ideas that RPGs have to offer. I think I've used three in my home games over the past five years, and once at school. Though to be fair, each appearance was memorable, especially the one at school (which was just the young green from Phandelver).

When I do use them, I make sure that there is plenty of space for them to do their thing, and that the party has options to achieve their objective without necessarily having to fight. And I like to use metallic dragons as antagonists and non-metallics as allies more often than not, because I hate the idea that a dragon's personality is derived from the colour of its scales.
 
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Varies by campaign, sometimes used, sometimes not, but never as a "random encounter" like the days of old. If a dragon makes it into my game, it's likely a major NPC in some way.

Dragonlance as @Stormonu pointed out really pushed for unique personalities and ancient ties (to mortals, to the gods), and NPC dragons like the tragic Flamestrike (aged and demented, half-blind, saw refugee children as her children she lost in the dragon war to the dragonlance). However, it depends if they get an NPC block. In the Dragonlance campaign, our party (both in AD&D and 5E) had the chance to ride on good dragons and strike down a lot of generic enemy dragons who didn't have NPC blocks because they had no other role for the campaign. Note: in DL, dragons predate souls and aren't like mortals who come in all alignments. They are true children of the gods.

I also ran an AD&D trilogy of modules where the characters worked alongside good dragons to find out who was killing their young and ended up in the epic finale gaining special artifacts that allowed them to assume aspects of dragons against an outerplanar invasion. So along with NPCs, we had "dragon magic items."

Finally, I play them smart and clever. Sitting in a crowded cave where they can't strafe, hit and run, or fly away if there's trouble is foolish even for the youngest, and the eldest will surely know most every trick in the humanoid playbook.
 

This is a straight copy-paste of the "How do you use giants in your game?" thread where I answered. But then I thought I did something similar with dragons, I would share here.

For our second or third campaign, which turned into a 3-4 year project and we went from 1st to 15th or 16th level, we had dragons at some point. Again, as with the giants in my first campaign, I opted for an unorthodox solution.

We didn't introduce dragons at first. It was supposed to be a low-magic few magic items gritty realism world, so such creatures had no business there. My character was a Japanese or Chinease warrior ("Zanthian" to be exact, an imaginary country we had), Zanthian noble (same as Waterdavian) barbarian - he was a refined noble the entire time, except in combat he went into an Emptiness or Void state of mind, which we treated as Rage.

We were visiting his hometown (rotating DM-s) and I literally designed one encounter after the dragon fight scene in 47 ronin. The party just killed an evil necromancer, who was a brother of the good high level cleric. Well, they didn't expect they both have a niece who didn't know the entire story except the party killed one of her uncles, so she lured them to a remote location.

It turns out the 5 Zanthian noble families stole, bought or traded the secret of dragonkind at the dawn of their nation. Unlike the natural dragons (chromatic), the metallic dragons are only five. Only one reincarnation manifests in a family and the size of the dragon depends on how long that person has been aware that he or she is the incarnate, and how long has trained to control the dragon form.

She was the Gold dragon, the their house, Wu, was the most powerful and in charge of religion in the city. I suppose they bought the secret in gold.
Another house had the Silver dragon, and they were negotiators. I suppose they bought it in silver.
The house of naval trade were half-thieves, half-pirates and had the Copper dragon. They got it really cheap!
My character was from the military family (barbarians!) and they had the Bronze dragon. So I suppose their ancestor won the secret by force and military strategy!
I think we swapped the last dragons for Mercury! Needless to say that house were politicians and schemers. They were the last to obtain the secret of the dragonkind, obviously!

We later had fun in PeiPei's kitchen, a pocket dimension where PeiPei, the Uranium dragon was locked away for being too dangerous!

How do you use dragons in your games?

I really love what you did with the Noble Houses each having a Dragon Incarnations, I might just steal that idea :)

Dragons are very much a background element imc, known in legend but unlikely to be encountered directly* and if they are it will probably not be a combat encounter. The Great Dragon Bishnagar lies beneath the City of Bishnagar where he runs the international banking system (he stores gold and other valuables in exchange for enchanted Notes called Draken-Marks).

The Golden Celestial T'ien Lung is a worshipped diety, other Shen Lung and Pan Lung might be encountered as local "River Spirits" but not generally as direct antagonist. Song Dragons might be encountered as NPCs in Humanoid form, but rarely as dragons.

One thing I have taken to doing is using Dragon Regional Effects and even Lairs but without the PCs meeting the Dragon. For Instance one legend tells of the Copper Mesa an isolated system of box canyons and desert mesa that is protected by a mischevious Copper Dragon with a sense of humor and love of riddles, who often likes to play tricks on travelers passing through its territory. A Gnome copper miners village exist in the canyon and they have established a trading center that brings in merchants and tinkerers from a wide area, as well as adventurers who may or may not be tested by the watching dragon.
 

Dragons exist and are even fairly common; however, the only dragon my players met in the last campaign I ran was a dragon elder (essentially a god) though they weren't able to interact with it, as it was mostly set dressing.

I've also reduced my dragons down a bit, I don't have metallic, chromatic, other types of dragons instead it's flame, frost, storm, stone, life, and death. Dragonborn follow the same pattern.
 


I've included 3 dragons total in all my games since I started DM'ing around 1993.

They are just a huge pain to run properly, and if ran properly, it is hard for a party to defeat one.

The game in itself is actually pretty bad at running a creature with flying and powerful standoff weaponry well. The mechanics are there, but they are clunky in every edition.

On the other hand, restraining a dragon to a lair where it can't maneuver is completely not fair to the dragon. Neither does the CR or XP value of the dragon if defeated work in this case either.

In dungeon settings, which are the best for the game mechanics, in a similar challenge to the party, a powerful undead, demon or devil, or even a powerful NPC is simply better and easier to run as a DM.
 

On the other hand, restraining a dragon to a lair where it can't maneuver is completely not fair to the dragon. Neither does the CR or XP value of the dragon if defeated work in this case either.
I would tend to think that a highly intelligent creature with a penchant for valuable, stealable hoards and for sleeping long periods of time would tend to either choose a lair where it IS possible to maneuver and use their strengths; or one that is nearly impossible to reach (and/or carry loot away from) but that is surrounded by defensible areas where it CAN use its strengths. Maybe with a few watch-minions to alert it to the presence of raiders at a fair distance from its actual sleeping area.

I don't personally find it that difficult to run or set up dragon fights. But it does take a bit of forethought. I think one wants some open spaces for flying, but also cover to protect against ranged weapons and spells. And, of course, some signature environmental hazards like sheer cliffs, glaciers with crevasses, underwater caves, lakes of lava or boiling water, quicksand bogs and/or just tunnels with multiple exits from which to attack the main battle map. Keeping in mind that dragons have sufficient strength and intelligence to artificially shape, carve out, or construct terrain in and around their lairs to suit their needs even if it isn't naturally occurring
 

I played several campaigns that started with the box sets and each box has a dragon or two in it. Stormwreck Isle has 3 of them but you only fight one at 3rd level.

I do not mind having dragons and would tend to have one per campaign appear, but they have been more popular recently in my games.
 

I've included 3 dragons total in all my games since I started DM'ing around 1993.

They are just a huge pain to run properly, and if ran properly, it is hard for a party to defeat one.

The game in itself is actually pretty bad at running a creature with flying and powerful standoff weaponry well. The mechanics are there, but they are clunky in every edition.

On the other hand, restraining a dragon to a lair where it can't maneuver is completely not fair to the dragon. Neither does the CR or XP value of the dragon if defeated work in this case either.

In dungeon settings, which are the best for the game mechanics, in a similar challenge to the party, a powerful undead, demon or devil, or even a powerful NPC is simply better and easier to run as a DM.
Plus, you know...it's a dragon. Dime a dozen. Why do I want to run that, when I could be using a giant floating eyeball with death rays, or a telepathic fish monster? Every now and then it's fun to Smaug it up, but mostly...nah. Seen it before.
 

Plus, you know...it's a dragon. Dime a dozen. Why do I want to run that, when I could be using a giant floating eyeball with death rays, or a telepathic fish monster? Every now and then it's fun to Smaug it up, but mostly...nah. Seen it before.
Hmm. The combination of high speed, intelligence, high-damage ranged attack, and extreme terrain makes dragons fun for me to run, tactically. I like running aboleths as well...I remember using their phantasmal force lair ability last time I ran an aboleth fight to trick the PCs into wasting their alpha strike on a figment of their imagination. Beholders...make me sad. There's just something missing from the 5e version IMO. Maybe it's the random eye rays, or the slow fly speed, or the fact that they get shut down by a lowly Fog Cloud (without DM-side alterations) they just end up feeling so much less tactically interesting whenever I run one. On paper with all those potential effects on top of the antimagic cone they seem like they SHOULD be better. Maybe I'm just not all that great at setting up a suitable beholder lair.
 

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